HIV-positive people will now be able to join the army, announced Monday on France 2 the Minister of the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu, who has taken an order to this effect. The decree, on the proposal of the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, "will be published in the coming days" and will apply to the "gendarmerie, the firefighters of Paris and Marseille, and all the armed forces," said Sébastien Lecornu on the program The Four Truths.
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Having HIV will no longer be a criterion of discrimination on principle," he stressed. Until now, medical criteria for suitability for integration did not allow HIV-positive people to enter these professions.
The ban already lifted for police officers
By the end of November 2022, this discrimination in hiring against people living with HIV, the virus responsible for AIDS, had already been lifted for police officers. The government had repealed by decree the application of Sigycop, a physical fitness assessment system used in several public service occupations. Strictly applied, this assessment classified HIV-positive people as unfit.
Until now, the Ministry of the Armed Forces, whose health service governs the recruitment of gendarmes and military firefighters, had always refused to modify the Sigycop. The latest scientific studies have shown that HIV-positive people on antiretroviral therapy have an undetectable viral load and do not transmit HIV.
